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Roosevelt and the New Deal · Saberian History Lectures

• 0:00
  Wires on. So before we get to the election of 1932, I want to go back to something I
• 0:10
  didn't really hit very well in this class, but the thought occurred to me in seventh
• 0:16
  and I was like, oh, I want to go back to this. So when you think about this for a moment,
• 0:26
  you have a remarkable economic boom in the period of 1920 to 1929. 2.4 percent unemployment,
• 0:42
  near doubling of the gross domestic product. I mean, things are rocking and rolling. Now,
• 0:48
  what drives the engine of the industrial economy of the 1920s? Capitalism, capital and its
• 1:00
  different sources. Credit is one source of capital. Yes? So when I look at the capital
• 1:05
  economy of the 1920s, I have credit or layaway. I have stocks. I also have, what else? Say
• 1:27
  it again? Trusts are companies, so they have changing stocks, although you key on a word
• 1:33
  that I'm going to get to in a moment. You have cash itself. And one of the ways that
• 1:41
  you have more cash in the economy is the tax cuts of the 1920s. Remember, in the 1920s,
• 1:49
  the top tax bracket goes from 73 percent to 24 percent. You're talking a 30 percent tax
• 2:01
  cut for some of your high earners. Those people can then invest the money that they're not
• 2:06
  being taxed on as cash, as stocks, or primarily they can invest it back into the economy.
• 2:12
  Does that make sense? Okay. So what happens is you have a period of inflation. Very often
• 2:27
  when you have periods of economic growth, you have periods of inflation, which is there's
• 2:31
  a lot of money in the system, but money itself loses value. Okay. Now, here's where, here's
• 2:43
  the concept that I missed in the class lecture last time, but I got it on the podcast lecture,
• 2:47
  but I'm not going to make you re-listen to it. I'm going to save you the trouble. What
• 2:50
  does the word credit mean? What does it come from? Well, that's what credit comes from.
• 3:02
  I mean the word. It's a Latin word. It comes from the Latin credo, meaning I believe. If
• 3:12
  you buy something on credit, the credit card company believes you're going to pay them
• 3:20
  back. Now, they take an interest as to whether or not you're going to pay them back by charging
• 3:27
  you what? Interest. Interest. To make sure that you don't forget. Yes? So if I think
• 3:36
  about this for a moment, one of the major pillars of the American economic system in
• 3:40
  the 1920s was belief. At the risk of sounding like the preacher, faith is faith in things
• 3:51
  hoped for, not things seen. Is credit really there? Credit is belief. So now when you get
• 4:03
  to the depression, 1929 and oh we'll just say 1929 to 1941. First of all, you have production,
• 4:14
  reduction in production. So your production is down. What happens to your credit? Well,
• 4:24
  production goes down. What happens to stock prices? Nope, not in 1929. 37% loss in a day.
• 4:36
  What happens to people's faith in what they believe to the point of extinction? So production
• 4:55
  is down, stock prices are down, credit markets contract. So what do people do if they don't
• 5:02
  have faith? Well, they run on the banks. And what happens to some of the banks? They run
• 5:08
  out of cash and those banks close. So you may have people that may have had accounts
• 5:14
  in banks that can no longer access their capital. So all of a sudden you now have a limited
• 5:20
  cash supply. So now what's left? The taxes. So in a situation like this where you're already
• 5:39
  facing a constricting capital market, what is the single worst thing you can possibly
• 5:44
  do? Increase taxes. And in the Hoover administration they do. There are two forms of tax increase.
• 5:53
  One is the Smoot-Hully Tariff Act. What is a tariff? Tax on imports, which the other
• 5:59
  countries reciprocate, which becomes a tax on exports. So here you have a type of taxation
• 6:07
  there. And then during the Hoover administration, 1930 to 1932, you actually have an increase
• 6:14
  in the tax rates. Does that make sense? Now, is the United States the only country in an
• 6:33
  economic crisis? No, this is a global crisis. Now, one of the things that I want you to
• 6:44
  ponder for a moment is I want to go back to a catastrophic event in Western civilization.
• 7:00
  First of all, do you all have what you need from the board here? So what was the governments,
• 7:15
  what type of governments arose in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire? Well, yes, but
• 7:26
  very specifically it was a system of feudalism, yes? So in the system of feudalism, you had
• 7:39
  your lord who had other retainers that he used to protect people in the state or in
• 7:51
  the county. And who are the lowest people in the feudal society? There is a word, starts
• 8:04
  with an S, serfs. So at the very bottom you have the serfs. Now, what most people fail
• 8:12
  to appreciate is where the word serf comes from. It comes from the Latin word serus,
• 8:23
  which means slave. Now, I don't know if your world history teachers took you through this
• 8:36
  journey. After the catastrophic collapse of the Roman Empire, the people of Europe sold
• 8:48
  themselves and their descendants into slavery, perpetual slavery to see to their own survival.
• 9:00
  That's how the system of feudal serfdom began, that the free peoples of Europe sold themselves
• 9:06
  into slavery for their own protection. Now, if I go back to that feudal system for a moment,
• 9:14
  I can say, eh, this is probably 600 AD, maybe 700. How long does it take for humanity to
• 9:24
  get past feudal serfdom? If I'm going from, say, the year 700 AD, and that's being optimistic,
• 9:33
  I mean some people would place feudal serfdom as far back as the fall of the city itself.
• 9:39
  Till when? When do the Europeans walk away from feudal serfdom? Russia doesn't walk away
• 9:48
  from it till the 19th century. England doesn't walk away from it until oh 1660s. Almost a
• 9:57
  thousand years of bondage did free people sign themselves and their descendants away
• 10:04
  to. But to the children and the grandchildren and the children's children's children, did
• 10:17
  they notice the chains or were the chains part of their everyday lives? And so, I say
• 10:27
  to you, I posit this just so that you may think critically about your current station
• 10:34
  and about your current state of government. In 1932, our ancestors in many ways willingly
• 10:46
  gave up their freedom and their constitutional prerogatives for their own safety and survival.
• 10:58
  We kind of don't like to think about it that way because we still like to sing that we
• 11:03
  are the land of the free and the home of the brave. By the way, land of the free, home
• 11:09
  of the brave, where does that come from? National Anthem written by Francis Scott Key during
• 11:18
  which war? War of 1812. Now, it is very easy to sing about the land of the free and the
• 11:30
  home of the brave. It is very easy to fight the oppressor when they come at you with a
• 11:37
  sword. When an oppressor comes at you with a sword, you know you are very obviously in
• 11:41
  danger and so what is the human instinct to do? To fight back. But the question becomes,
• 11:50
  what do you do when the oppressor comes with bread? It is a little different. It is a little
• 12:03
  awkward. It is a little more awkward when they come with bread and you and your children
• 12:10
  are starving. And so you have to ask yourself, do I take the bread and do I take the chains
• 12:18
  that go with it? Remember what I have said before, slim wrists wear chains quite well.
• 12:27
  So here we have in 1932, you have a country of shantytowns. You have people who are living
• 12:38
  in mass starvation. You have an industrial catastrophe, a catastrophe of capital and
• 12:45
  a catastrophe of agriculture. The other thing, the other great aspect of America's economy
• 12:50
  is the agricultural economy. Now what has been going on perennially in the agricultural
• 12:55
  economy of the United States? There have been agricultural improvements that have greatly
• 13:01
  increased crop production, but what does that do to the value? So the value goes down.
• 13:14
  So you have farmers who had taken out loans to buy larger tracts of land, farmers who
• 13:20
  had taken out loans to buy seed, farmers who had taken out loans to buy equipment. They
• 13:26
  are overextended and then the bottom drops out. They are pushed off the land. So now
• 13:38
  let's get to the protest. You have angry farmers. You have angry farmers dumping produce while
• 13:48
  you have starvation in America's streets. And you have a march on Washington. People
• 13:54
  go to the government to demand answers. How has this calamity befallen us? July, the summer
• 14:04
  of 1932, 43,000 protesters descend upon Washington, D.C. Now to give you a little context, who
• 14:16
  else has had angry protesters descend on their capitals? And in the 1930s, Berlin, Rome,
• 14:33
  Moscow in 1917, when you see the throngs of angry men outside your capital doors, what
• 14:42
  could it possibly be? Is it just a protest? Let me tell you something, ladies and gentlemen,
• 14:52
  because I think you have lived in a time where you have seen the blurred lines between the
• 14:57
  free speech of political protest and the vile mob of violence. Here is the basic difference
• 15:06
  between a protest and a riot. Torches, pitchforks, and stones. A protest is when you march carrying
• 15:21
  American flags. A protest is when you march carrying crosses. A protest is when you march
• 15:27
  carrying signs. A mob is when you wear masks and throw molotovs. A mob is where you wear
• 15:35
  masks and throw stones. There is only a very slim difference between the two. And there's
• 15:43
  one other big difference I want you to keep in mind such that you may stay safe in this
• 15:47
  world. A protest is you stand for your cause by the light of day. Mobs bring fire at night.
• 16:00
  So a couple of things going on. You have 43,000 angry protesters. Now one of the things that's
• 16:05
  actually kind of interesting is 17,000 of the 43,000 have a legitimate grievance. And
• 16:11
  so let me tell you a little bit of exercise in mathematics and then we'll get back to
• 16:14
  the rise of tyranny. So kind of interesting, in 1917 we have four million men conscripted
• 16:26
  into the American army. How old were they? 21 to 31. In 1924, Congress passed legislation
• 16:44
  providing for a retirement bonus to people who had served the country in World War I.
• 16:53
  In 1924, how was the economy doing? Was it good or bad? It was rockin' and rollin'.
• 16:58
  Life was good. Thing is, they promised these veterans a bonus and I believe the number
• 17:06
  was $1,000, which back then was a lot of money, but it wasn't going to be paid until 1945.
• 17:16
  Again, it was a retirement bonus. Couple of things I want you to keep in mind, do some
• 17:25
  math. What's the difference between 45 and 17? The 1900s cancel, yes? 28? Yeah? Okay.
• 17:36
  So add 28 years here. What's 21 plus 28? Congratulations, you all can do basic arithmetic. So 49 to
• 17:53
  31 plus 28. 59. What's life expectancy? 50 to 55. Half of them would be dead before they
• 18:15
  could collect. Diabolical, yes? Now, I think I'm going to answer your question, so let
• 18:24
  me say what I think and then we'll see if it answers your question. So in 1932, those
• 18:32
  veterans were like, hey, you know that $1,000 that we were promised in 1945? Can we get
• 18:38
  that now when we need it? Was that your question? No. Okay. Why did they wait so long? Because
• 18:45
  they wanted to give it to them. Partially expecting people to die. Also, what you're
• 18:52
  doing is you're assuming that the economic growth over time and the increase in population
• 18:57
  would increase the revenue such that you have the money to give. But come now, much of our
• 19:05
  social retirement benefits are actually based on an over glorified Ponzi scheme, where I
• 19:12
  take money from these people so I can give money to these people. Social security itself
• 19:16
  is a Ponzi scheme, but it doesn't exist yet. We'll get to that one. So far so good? So
• 19:24
  you have a large number of people camped out outside the capitol. Some of them are armed,
• 19:29
  some of them are not. Anyway, they're worried about communist infiltration. So when you
• 19:33
  have an angry mob outside of your capitol and you're worried it might be infiltrated
• 19:37
  by the communists and your attorney general says, hey, Mr. President, that angry mob might
• 19:41
  have been infiltrated by the communists. What do you do? What do you do? You bust out with
• 19:50
  the suppression. You bring in the army. A couple of things kind of interesting. Shortly
• 19:55
  after World War I, and I don't remember if it came out during the war or shortly after.
• 20:00
  Okay, so you remember World War I, you've got poison gas. Somewhere in after World War
• 20:07
  I, you have the use of tear gas by law enforcement. What's the great thing about tear gas?
• 20:11
  It's not lethal. It doesn't kill you, but it is irritating, literally. Okay, something
• 20:19
  to keep in mind. Remember, hey, this is an evolution. Before you didn't have tear gas.
• 20:23
  You just had to go out and kill the people, right? Now we can disperse the crowd using
• 20:26
  tear gas and water cannons. And in 1986, you have rubber bullets. Not until then. Again,
• 20:33
  this is why you didn't want the authorities to get your protest confused with the riot,
• 20:37
  because if you got the protest confused with the riot, you had a bad day as a protester.
• 20:42
  So the Army Chief of Staff, Douglas MacArthur, who was at that time a highly respected military
• 20:49
  hero from the First World War, was given the order to clear the capital, basically. Use
• 20:56
  a combined unit of infantry, cavalry, and six tanks. Armor. Well, you have the tanks
• 21:07
  and they're just sitting there. You know, I mean, they're not just opening up with the
• 21:11
  artillery shells on the tanks, but you know. Look, look, you can spook a horse, but when
• 21:17
  the tank says move, you move. I mean, it's kind of like when you're trying to change
• 21:21
  lanes in a school bus. People get out of your way. Army clears out the bonus army. It is
• 21:27
  a national headline sensation. Now, God bless Doug MacArthur. William Manchester writes
• 21:33
  about him extensively in his book, American Caesar. Douglas MacArthur, who has the bad
• 21:41
  sense to get up in front of the reporters after bringing order to the capital and in
• 21:47
  full military dress uniform of dresses, the movie phone cameras and the reporters on radio.
• 21:53
  And he says, I have restored order to the capital. He says that in full military dress
• 21:57
  uniform. Now, when you see a general in full military dress say, I have restored order
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  to the capital, what does that sound like? That sounds like, you know, Napoleon, Caesar,
• 22:14
  Maria Zanzala. It is not a good day when you have to bust out with the army to clear out
• 22:20
  your capital. Okay. Coincidentally enough, one of the people who's observing this situation
• 22:29
  is the man who is running for president in 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who at that
• 22:34
  time is the governor of New York. He calls Douglas MacArthur the most dangerous man in
• 22:40
  America. Now, it gets a little more awkward in about, oh, you know, less than six months.
• 22:50
  And we'll get to that in just a moment. So FDR runs against Hoover and you have an election,
• 23:00
  the presidential election of 1932. FDR wins in a landslide. I want to kind of talk to
• 23:07
  you briefly about the landslide and then I'm going to go to the map. So I want you to look
• 23:13
  at the 1928 electoral coalition of the Republican Party before I go into FDR's victory. So if
• 23:19
  you're a Republican in 1928, you probably are either a Western farmer or a Northern
• 23:30
  business interest. In 1928, if you were a Democrat, you were either an immigrant or
• 23:51
  you were a Southern conservative. And I'm just going to put Klan in parentheses. Now,
• 24:01
  you may recall in the election of 1928, the Democratic coalition was split because they
• 24:05
  put up Al Smith, who was Catholic, which alienated the Klan. 1932, are you a happy farmer if
• 24:14
  you're a Western farmer in 1932? If you're a capitalist, are you a happy person in 1932?
• 24:23
  Now if you're a member of the Klan, you were never happy. So are you good with voting for
• 24:30
  President Roosevelt, or are you good with voting for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a Northern
• 24:36
  New York progressive governor? If you're okay with it, they're like, what do you got to
• 24:41
  lose, right? If you're an immigrant, are you on board with FDR? Yes, he's the governor
• 24:45
  of your state. You like him. And if you're one of these disaffected groups who used to
• 24:49
  vote Republican, you're like, you know, we tried this whole Anabash fair market capitalism
• 24:54
  thing, it just didn't work out. And so in the election of 1932, here's the map. Roosevelt
• 25:03
  carried every state, but I think five. I'll let you pause for a moment while you reflect
• 25:18
  on the map. I see some of you staring. It's like being in an art museum. You're like,
• 25:24
  wow, I've never seen a map like that. Don't worry, we have a few other tasty ones we'll
• 25:28
  get to in a bit. There are some really fun electoral maps in the book. But yeah, actually
• 25:35
  kind of-
• 25:36
  FDR wins in a landslide. A couple of things I want you to keep in mind. Okay, so you have
• 25:38
  the presidency. How often do we elect presidents? Every four years, right? How often do we elect
• 25:46
  people in the House? Two years. Did you notice that two is a factor of four? So when we get
• 25:52
  a new president, we do elect all of the Congress people. And the Senate, we elect every six
• 26:00
  years. And so in that particular election year, one president, all of the House seats,
• 26:07
  and one third of the Senate are up for grabs. Let's go back to the map. So not only do you
• 26:15
  have the first Democratic president since FDR, what happens to the control of Congress?
• 26:21
  It goes to the Democrats. So you now have two of the three branches of government controlled
• 26:28
  by the Democratic Party. So you have the executive branch under the control of FDR. You have
• 26:34
  the legislative branch under the control, essentially, political coattails of people
• 26:40
  who are beholden to FDR for help getting them elected. What's left?
• 26:47
  Well, some of the judicial. Now again, if I look at history, if I'm in the judiciary,
• 26:57
  who appoints the judiciary? The president. But in 1932, 1933, FDR hasn't appointed a
• 27:07
  single Supreme Court justice yet. Who has? Well, maybe Hoover won. Who was president
• 27:16
  before Hoover? Coolidge. Who was president before Coolidge? Harding. So you have a 12-year
• 27:22
  stint of Republican presidents. And so as a result, the judiciary is still loyal to
• 27:27
  the ideologies of the Republican Party. That needs to be kept in mind. Now, have we had
• 27:33
  similar circumstances where perhaps a Democratic Republican president was beholden or was restrained
• 27:40
  by a court from another ideology or another time? Andrew Jackson and John Marshall. Yes?
• 27:53
  So one of the things that you need to keep in mind is that the Supreme Court does represent
• 27:57
  a political constituency, but usually that political constituency is the past. And we'll
• 28:03
  get to the tension between him and the Supreme Court in a moment. So in March of 1933, Franklin
• 28:13
  Delano Roosevelt takes the oath of office. I say March of 1933. Now here's the part where
• 28:22
  you have to ask yourself, is the tyranny worth it? I say this in a time of reasonable economic
• 28:30
  prosperity. I do not know the desperation, the desperate times that cause for desperate
• 28:35
  measures. And maybe, just maybe, and I say this to you, because tomorrow belongs to you.
• 28:43
  Because crises will come and you will have to ask yourself, do the ends justify the means?
• 28:51
  So let me tell you the first thing that happens shortly after Roosevelt is sworn in. One of
• 29:05
  the reporters, Walter Lippman, actually posited that FDR might have to assume dictatorial
• 29:11
  powers to achieve what he needed to achieve in the economy. It is a very frightening thing
• 29:17
  when your journalism department starts talking about giving a president dictatorial powers.
• 29:26
  So in March, the first thing that they want to do in the first hundred days is they want
• 29:37
  to implement aspects of the New Deal. The New Deal, if I could sum it up, is divided
• 29:43
  into three basic ideas. The first is reform of banking, the second is unemployment relief,
• 29:49
  and the third is agricultural adjustment. So the first thing that happens immediately
• 30:12
  after the inauguration, the President of the United States orders every bank in the United
• 30:16
  States to be closed. Let me say that again. Immediately after the inauguration of a president,
• 30:24
  every bank in the United States is closed by order of the President. How's that strange,
• 30:32
  new and different?
• 30:33
  Because the bank isn't really part of the government.
• 30:42
  No, it's not.
• 30:43
  So he's saying he's controlling the money, basically.
• 30:48
  That they close the banks for four days with tacit approval of a lapdog Congress and by
• 30:58
  the consent of the government. So when they reopen the banks, they reopen them chartered
• 31:08
  under this new idea of a federal deposit insurance corporation.
• 31:14
  Now basically, they close the banks and you couldn't reopen the banks unless you were
• 31:21
  FDIC insured. Now what is the FDIC? The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is that the
• 31:26
  President of the United States would insure deposits in a bank up to $2,500. Now it's
• 31:33
  something like a quarter mill, but at the time $2,500 was a lot of money.
• 31:40
  Now something else, so you have the four-day holiday. In April of 1933, you have an executive
• 31:54
  order 6102. It prohibited the private ownership of gold. Why do you prohibit the private ownership
• 32:04
  of gold?
• 32:07
  Because gold hoarding was thought to have been a type of capital contraction. But think
• 32:17
  about this for a moment, people. Where in the Constitution of these United States does
• 32:24
  it give a Congress or the President the right to take away a precious metal from the people?
• 32:37
  Do you see the chains being forged? Well actually, how many of you remember the song by CCR,
• 32:54
  Who Will Stop the Rain? Five-year plans and new deals wrapped in golden chains. And I
• 33:02
  wonder, still I wonder, who will stop the rain? Five-year plan was Stalin's term at
• 33:12
  agricultural reform. The New Deal and the Golden Chains. Do you see it? Perhaps.
• 33:23
  So then you have the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission. One of the thoughts
• 33:28
  was, well, the devaluation of the stock market is one of the driving things behind the economy,
• 33:35
  so let's regulate the stock exchange. So one of the things that the SEC does was it imposed
• 33:43
  trading practices on Wall Street. And it created a process where you had to have a license
• 33:53
  in order to be a broker. By the way, so previously you didn't need a license to be a stock broker.
• 34:07
  Now kind of an interesting thing. Maybe you wanted to be a licensed broker. What does
• 34:14
  the licensing process also do besides adding professionalism to an organization?
• 34:23
  Once the government tracks you easier, it also makes it exclusive. So if you're already
• 34:27
  an existing winner, what does that keep from emerging? Competitors. We still haven't gotten
• 34:34
  past the concept of licensed brokers, even in the era of Scott trade. How many of you
• 34:40
  know some people? They go online, they trade stocks, they still have to pay brokerage fees.
• 34:45
  Now that's a technological mutation coming in later. Okay, moving on. So we got past
• 34:52
  the Securities and Exchange Commission. But you get the idea that some of these are actually
• 34:57
  a bit heavy-handed and some of these might not entirely be keeping in the idea of life,
• 35:03
  liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Now here's the other thing I want you to think
• 35:09
  about and this is part of the aspect that changes the relationship of the president
• 35:13
  to the people. And then I'll get to, so I got past regulating Wall Street, now I'm getting
• 35:20
  to the federal budget. So Roosevelt does reduce the wages of federal workers, does reduce
• 35:27
  the payments to veterans, does reduce the payments to people with disabilities. Again,
• 35:31
  he's trying to keep costs under control because at this point the government is still tied
• 35:34
  to a gold standard. Eventually the U.S. will have to go off of a gold standard. Okay. So
• 35:42
  couple of things that I kind of want to get into and this should actually really kind
• 35:47
  of make you think about this for a moment. You all have grown up in a time when you know
• 35:54
  who the president is, you know his voice, you know what he looks like. You see his image
• 36:01
  peppered everywhere on your television, on your phone. You could even hear his voice
• 36:07
  in your head at will. Yes? In 1932, your relationship with the president was far less intimate.
• 36:21
  Now here's the thing that was actually kind of interesting. It is under Roosevelt that
• 36:25
  you have a weekly radio address. Now they were called the fireside chats. The reason
• 36:37
  they were called the fireside chats is because typically where was the radio? In the living
• 36:42
  room. Not in the fire, in the living room. I mean if you really didn't like what was
• 36:45
  going on you still didn't put it in the fire because that thing cost money, right? How
• 36:51
  is that different? Think about that for a moment. Your president is talking to you in
• 37:04
  your home. And then all of a sudden the radio is where you hear the voice of your God King.
• 37:18
  How is that any different from the little altars the Romans would set up to their ancestral
• 37:22
  gods right next to the fires? You don't begin to see the beginning of a deification. By
• 37:31
  the way, our presidents still do a weekly radio address. By the way, I believe this
• 37:37
  coming week our current president is going to address a joint session of Congress and
• 37:43
  it's going to be on television blasted into people's homes and onto people's phones.
• 37:51
  There was a time where the government was out there. Where it governed your behavior
• 37:57
  out there. But now it's going into your home. You get the idea. Alright. So now putting
• 38:07
  people to work. And then we'll get to some of the more sinister things. So, also one
• 38:16
  of the things the textbook points out, he did support the end of Prohibition. However,
• 38:20
  the way the book phrases it is as if his executive actions had something to do with it. Prohibition
• 38:25
  was overturned by a state convention process and it did happen in the Roosevelt administration.
• 38:34
  Okay. Moving on. Putting people to work. You have Federal Emergency Relief Recovery Administration,
• 38:41
  the FERA. The FERA puts people to work building infrastructure for the state. Now why do you
• 38:49
  put people to work building infrastructure for the state? Or for the government?
• 38:53
  Because you're creating jobs and at the same time you're helping the government.
• 38:59
  Alright. You're creating jobs. Now the other thing that, and I've often said this, a down
• 39:04
  economy is the best time to do infrastructure projects for two reasons. One, you need, people
• 39:11
  need jobs. Two, if there is large unemployment, do you have to pay as much as when there's
• 39:17
  an employment shortage? And so they're creating jobs, they're building schools, airports,
• 39:28
  roads, bridges, etc. You also have the creation of what is called a Civilian Conservation
• 39:38
  Corps. The Civilian Conservation Corps was run by the War Department. It was essentially
• 39:43
  putting people between, unmarried men between the ages of 18 and 25 into work camps.
• 40:05
  Why would the War Department need to put men between the ages of 18 to 25 into work camps?
• 40:09
  That's a good thought. You're more sinister than I would give the Roosevelt administration
• 40:20
  for. Who is most likely to be the cannon fodder for a revolution? Unemployed men between the
• 40:28
  ages of 18 to 25. Now for those of you in psychology, by the age of 25 what finally
• 40:32
  gets formed? Frontal cortex. Now they don't know that because again, cognitive neuroscience
• 40:38
  hasn't gotten that far. But even the Roosevelt administration knew that guys less than 25
• 40:44
  do stupid things. But in a way, segregating your population by age and by gender, isn't
• 40:56
  that almost a type of concentration? Now they went willingly, why? Because there's work
• 41:04
  and they needed the money to send home. Now this works when you're printing money. It
• 41:10
  doesn't work when money is tied to a real thing. Yes?
• 41:12
  Were these work camps in the West or were they overseas?
• 41:16
  They were in the West, they were in the hinterland, they were in the United States. They were
• 41:21
  not forward deployed overseas. No, they were not overseas. And you have the government
• 41:28
  of the United States intervening in the industrial market. So you had the creation of what was
• 41:33
  called Fair Labor Practices. So if I'm trying to deal with an unemployment situation, what
• 41:44
  might I try to do? First of all, I'm FDR, unions are part of my coalition.
• 41:52
  Strengthen the unions.
• 41:54
  Alright, first thing I'm going to do is strengthen the unions. In other words, you will hire
• 41:58
  union work. By the way, where does the government get off saying to an employer who they will
• 42:02
  and won't hire?
• 42:08
  Where in the Constitution?
• 42:11
  Nowhere.
• 42:12
  Nowhere. Okay, so you have it opening up to unions. You have wage increases. Now I know
• 42:17
  I'm saying that is almost a bad thing. No, that's not a bad thing per se, but you get
• 42:21
  the idea. This is not being done entirely by legislation. This is being done by coercion.
• 42:27
  Another thing that you have is, what's one way to increase wages? You get certain people
• 42:31
  out of the workforce. Who is really cheap?
• 42:34
  Children.
• 42:38
  You get children out of the labor force. You can actually get children out of the labor
• 42:42
  force two ways, and apparently the voices are calling me.
• 42:47
  Hello?
• 42:49
  I have a meeting? No? Who is it?
• 42:58
  Okay, who's the parent?
• 43:03
  Hallam? Okay, he's here now?
• 43:09
  Okay, I'm double booked. I didn't know I was getting a meeting today, but okay. I'll talk
• 43:15
  to him in six. Does he know the way up here or do I need to go down?
• 43:19
  All right, good to know.
• 43:24
  Bye.
• 43:26
  More to follow.